226. The End of Time Management

<p>As the nineteenth century was turning to the twentieth century, Frederick Taylor grabbed a stopwatch. He stood next to a worker, and instructed that worker on exactly how to pick up a chunk of iron.</p> <p>Over and over, Taylor tweaked the prescribed movements. Grip the chunk of iron in this way, turn in this way, bend in this way.</p> <p>Once Taylor found the optimal combination of movements, he taught the process to other workers. Their productivity skyrocketed.</p> <p>“Taylorism,” as it came to be called, brought us leaps and bounds forward in productivity. Today, the remnants of Taylorism are ruining productivity.</p> <p>After Taylor’s intervention, the workers who were moving only twelve tons of iron a day were now moving forty-eight tons of iron a day. They quadrupled their productivity.</p> <p>Only a few decades before Taylorism, most people’s concept of time was more closely linked to the movement of the sun than it was to the stopwatch hand. The availability of daylight, the height of a stalk of corn, or the day of first frost that signaled the coming of winter, ruled the work of farmhands.</p> <p>Many of Taylor’s workers objected to having their movement so closely watched and timed, down to the second. Actually, more accurately than that -- Taylor’s stopwatch timed according to the hundredth-of-a-minute.</p> <p>But, <a href= "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management">“scientific management”</a>, as it was called, swept through the industrial world. Companies couldn’t stay in business without adopting it.</p> <p>The goal of Taylorism was to produce the most work possible in the minimum amount of time. As Taylor watched the movements of the workers, he was trying to reduce waste. He wanted each motion to be as quick and efficient as possible. He wanted each hundredth of a minute to bring the job closer to being done.</p> <p>But, Taylor discovered there was a limit.</p> <p>Logically, there’s no point in a worker sitting idle. Logically, if the worker keeps moving iron, he’ll move more iron